Remember in Watchmen, when Doctor Manhattan waxes all sentimental about the miracle of human existence? If you do, you'll recall that he's not talking about the human race — he's talking about the "unfathomable odds" of any specific, individual person coming into being.

Of course, Doctor Manhattan doesn't give any hard figures to to go along with what ultimately amounts to the most long-winded apology ever. Fortunately, there are people out there who are willing to actually do the math behind this mother of all existential problems.

Advertisement

So just how unfathomable are your odds of coming into being? According to the infographic featured below — which is based on this blog post by Dr. Ali Binazir — pretty un-f*cking-fathomable. Binazir writes:

Probability of your existing at all: 1 in 10^2,685,000.

As a comparison, the number of atoms in the body of an average male (80kg, 175 lb) is 10^27. The number of atoms making up the earth is about 10^50. The number of atoms in the known universe is estimated at 10^80.

So what's the probability of your existing? It's the probability of 2 million people getting together – about the population of San Diego – each to play a game of dice with trillion-sided dice. They each roll the dice, and they all come up the exact same number – say, 550,343,279,001.